Tag: vladimir putin

At first glance, Putin looks like a Communist. He was a former KGB agent before the collapse of the USSR — known as the Committee for State Security in English, the KGB was the security agency for the Soviet Union — he leads an authoritarian regime, and he has publicly lamented the collapse of the USSR.

Two Congressional committees, the one in the House at least temporarily sidelined by its chairman, Devin Nunes, are now investigating the question of Russian meddling in our 2016 election and the extent to which the Trump administration may or may not have been complicit in it.

In writing about Donald Trump in these pages last spring, I pointed out that part of his appeal — and his value — lay in his willingness to drive sacred cows out of the barn. Trump, and no one else, said bluntly that the American working class had been sold out. He, and no one else, said that America was giving Europe, South Korea and Japan a nearly free ride on defense and wondered why. He, and no one else, said that demonizing Russia at the risk of a new Cold War was stupid and dangerous.

It will happen, it is happening, it has happened. Donald Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. It is the greatest political shock of my lifetime, and I’m sure the sentiment is shared by many.

In the early 1970s, America’s influence in the Middle East stood at its peak. Egypt, then the region’s chief political power, had just expelled Russia, leaving American predominance unquestioned. Nowhere else in the world was it similarly unrivalled.

It is not often that a leader of a well-known and well-respected country makes a point to address the American public directly, let alone by the medium of an editorial in The New York Times. Vladimir Putin’s stark message to the American people did not go unnoticed by many, even those who were not regular readers of the Times, but in addition to the harsh criticisms made by Putin, he established himself a new title in the world as perhaps the greatest political genius of our time. Putin’s plan and its result were multifaceted — embracing an aura of superiority; diminishing American hypocrisy with a cloaked hypocrisy of his own; and establishing himself as a placeholding leader for the American people, who lacked a clear leadership on the issue of Syria. His greatest success was in playing on the already weary opinion of the American people while plopping himself into a leadership position, showing both a clear direction on the Syria issue and pointing out the flaws of the caustic nature of exceptionalism.